Tag: Helllsing

A while back I was on a work training course and shared a room with a guy who happened to have brought the first three volumes of Hellsing. I had heard a lot of great things about it over the years and the anime seems to be widely considerd as one of the great classics, like Full Metal Alchemist and Death Note. I had long planned to look it up but never got around to it, so I jumped at the opportunity to give it a try. This review only covers these first three volumes.

For comics, the visual style is obviously a major factor but not as relevant to the narrative, so let’s get this one covered fist. My impression of the drawing is that it’s okay. I’ve seen it praised, but I didn’t feel impressed by it myself. But it looks good and the images are not overcrowded with stuff that makes it difficult to figure out what’s going on. It works, that’s always the most important part.

But now to the story. Hellsing is set in a world that is plagued by vampires. Two main organizations are presented that are fighting against them. The Hellsing Organisation of the Anglican Church in Britain and Section XIII Iscariot of the Catholic Church. Both groups appear to be in a state of cold war but have made agreements to not operate in each others territory so they can focus on the main threat posed by the vampires. Hellsing’s top agent is Alucard, a vampire himself who dresses in a red coat and hat and has two big ass guns. The story begins with the recruitment of Seras Victoria, a police officer who was fatally wounded in a massacre commited by vampires and made immortal by Alucard who happened to have been send to deal with the situation. Shortly after the Hellsing headquarters get attacked and a majority of their staff slaughtered, which leads to Alucard and Seras going to Brazil to track down the people behind the attack.

What I quite liked of what I’ve read so far are the character design. Seras, Integra, Walter, and Bernadotte, as well as the two catholic nuns, all seemed like they could be really interesting or at least entertaining people to follow around in a story. But unfortunately I have to say, not in this story.

Even though it spans across three volumes, I found the plot to be very thin. Very little actually happpens or is explained and I had no real understanding of what’s going on for pretty much the entire time. The plot, or what little there is of it, seemed to me to be little more than an excuse to depict endless piles of slaughter and gore. It’s not that I have any problem with this in general. I like both the anime and manga of Neon Genesis Evangelion and have to say I am quite a fan of Elfen Lied. (Though the anime is awful, it drops almost all of the plot.) I’m still planning to get to Berserk in the near future. Extreme violence in manga can be great. But in Hellsing it felt very different to me. It didn’t seem like the blood and guts where there to make any point but that the comic exists only for the sake of violece and gore.

All in all, I have to say that the first three volumes of Hellsing left me very much unimpressed. Actually rather disappointed. Maybe “it gets better later”, but as it is I really feel no desire to get back to this one.